The members of ’s “The Lab” are students and early-career doctors, nurses, public health professionals, and others in the health space who want to change the field of medicine for the better. The Lab bridges the worlds of journalism and medicine, acting as a resource to keep us informed about the most pressing issues impacting healthcare workers, patients, and the profession of medicine itself. Members of The Lab contribute ideas, tips, op-eds, and expert insights to MedPage’s editorial team.
Henry Bair
Henry Bair is an MD/MBA candidate and Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University. His research focuses on the application of innovative technologies to deliver efficient, affordable, and accessible patient-centered healthcare. At Stanford, Henry directs courses on healthcare leadership, digital health, and clinician-patient communication strategies. His writings on humanistic medicine, healthcare delivery innovation, and medical education have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Academic Medicine, Journal of Hospital Medicine, and other publications.
Nidhi Bhaskar, MSc
Nidhi Bhaskar is a second-year medical student at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University.
She completed her undergraduate studies from Brown University and her MSc in medical anthropology from the University of Oxford. Previously, she served as the technical editor of the Global Emergency Medicine Literature Review, and the Editor in Chief of the Oxford Blue. Her research has focused on finding digital community-centered strategies to limit HIV transmission among queer minority men, exploring the role of agency in palliative care settings, and in exploring digital misinformation and psychosocial distress among individuals living with chronic disease.
As part of The Lab, she hopes to bridge her interests in journalism and medicine to center humanistic perspectives on medicine and make medical content more accessible. You can follow her on X: ().
Amanda Joy Calhoun, MD, MPH
Amanda Joy Calhoun, MD, MPH, is an adult/child psychiatry resident at Yale Child Study Center/Yale School of Medicine. Calhoun’s research focuses on the mental health effects of anti-Black racism in children, and she also specializes in the effects of medical anti-Black racism. She writes for both academic journals and general press and has published in New England Journal of Medicine, TIME magazine, Washington Post, and HuffPost, among others; she has appeared on CBS News, PBS Newshour, and MSNBC, discussing the harmful effect of racism on Black Americans. Calhoun is also a fellowship leader of the OpEd Project, a public speaker, a consultant, and a guest instructor at Yale College. You can follow her on X () and Instagram ()
Logan Cho
Logan Cho is a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is co-leader of the Health Policy Program at Mount Sinai and a content contributor for Healthcare Huddle. Logan completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University and is from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He can be found on X .
Jared Dashevsky, MEng
Jared Dashevsky is a fourth-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He's co-founder and head writer at Healthcare Huddle, a weekly healthcare newsletter focused on simplifying industry news for health professionals. You can follow him on X .
David Dent
David Dent is a PharmD candidate at VCU School of Pharmacy, and he is passionate about making the public more #AWARxE of the vital roles pharmacists play in healthcare. He is the co-founder of CREATORx, a collective of pharmacy students and pharmacists supporting pharmacy digital content creation across social media. His writing focuses on mental health, digital health, and healthcare news and policies impacting pharmacy practice. He has 4 years of inpatient pharmacy experience, and upon graduation, plans to pursue a residency in hospital administration. You can subscribe to his pharmacy podcast , to laugh and learn more, and follow him on X and Instagram .
Shanina Knighton, PhD, RN, CIC
Shanina Knighton is a nurse, scientist, and infection preventionist, and a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University in the school of nursing and biomedical engineering. Her work focuses on infection prevention and technology-based interventions to engage patients and older adults. During COVID-19, she has been instrumental in innovating and providing practical prevention tools and guidelines to community members, small businesses, community organizations, and public officials. She has distributed over 200,000 infographic sets locally and through organizations in different states; her practical tips have appeared in Forbes, Self Magazine, and Modern Woman Magazine.
Chloe Nazra Lee, MD, MPH
Chloe Nazra Lee MD, MPH, is a psychiatry resident at the University of Rochester Medical Center whose professional interests include narrative medicine, trauma disorders, and women's mental health. Her life before medicine included teaching preschool and a degree in Classical Languages & Literature. In her spare time, she writes about issues in medicine and her writing has appeared in Doximity, Ms. Magazine, and The Baltimore Sun. She is deeply passionate about improving understanding around intimate partner violence and coercive control, arguing against medical misconduct, and medical education. You can follow her on X .
Pranati Movva
Pranati Movva is a medical student at Michigan State University. Her research interests focus on community-based medical education and disability awareness. She hopes to use The Lab to amplify relevant medical information through writing. In her free time, she enjoys taking CycleBar classes and spending time with her grandparents.
Benjy Renton
Benjy Renton is a researcher focused on health disparities in excess mortality and other public health issues. He has previously worked with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Ariadne Labs on tools to increase COVID-19 vaccine access. Benjy graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in East Asian Studies and a minor in Geography.
Michal Ruprecht
Michal Ruprecht is an MD candidate at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is currently based in metro Detroit, where he writes for and edits and fact-checks content for ABC News. He previously interned at ABC News, and the American Public Health Association. Prior to that, he worked for The Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan's independent daily student newspaper.
Michal is interested in how disruptive medical journalism leads to improved scientific and medical understanding. He is an Association of Health Care Journalists American Cities Health Journalism Fellow and serves on the Society of Professional Journalists' Student Advisory Board. He is a board member of the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Riley's Way Foundation. Follow him on X .
Varsha Vedapudi
Varsha Vedapudi is a medical student at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. She previously graduated from the University of Michigan where she wrote more than 50 stories for The Michigan Daily. She is passionate about combining her interests in journalism and medicine in order to make academic research more accessible to the public.